


Chapter 25-26 (The Cruel Prince): Cardan's POV

by petricore



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Book 1: The Cruel Prince, F/M, First Kiss, Kissing, Love/Hate, POV Cardan Greenbriar, POV First Person, POV Male Character, Shame, chapter 25, soft cardan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27083701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petricore/pseuds/petricore
Summary: “You’re going to shoot me? Right now?”I don’t know of what my voice is infused with. Surprise? Hatred? Ah, how I hated her, how I hated what she was and that even before now, all those times when I had the leverage, the strength, the taunting laughter, I could never manage to bend her. To make her smaller, so that she could occupy a smaller space in my mind.Beg my forgiveness.I will keep hurting you until there is nothing left to hurt.She didn’t give up then. She had stood there, a symbol of pure resilience, hair messed up by my grip in the graying sky, and I had never loathed her more. Never wanted her more.Now our roles are reversed.I look at her now, barely kept at a leash, the rage brimming in her like it did back by the river. She is taut, pulled tight like the string of the crossbow, ready to snap.
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar
Comments: 7
Kudos: 69





	Chapter 25-26 (The Cruel Prince): Cardan's POV

**Author's Note:**

> Fell in love with the book, and had to process through the book fever by writing this piece. Besides lots of tension between our two lovebirds, I also wanted Cardan to process his family's death, and the lack of her presence in Cardan's life. Hope you enjoy and sorry for any mistakes - English isn't my first language, but I try xx

It takes me a while, to make the goblin and the dainty girl give in and invite me to the card game. I can feel the eyes of the blond one, the Ghost, flitting from the cards to me. But I’m comfortable. At ease. This is my world, this is what I’m good at. It was almost too easy to ply them with the good wine kept warm in the belly of the court, and as such have a chance to get ahold of it myself. The fragility of my position, the powerlessness gnaw at me, make my hands yearn for the neck of a bottle. Flashes of blood dripping on the dais. My sister’s chest, blooming like a red flower. This hollow feeling inside my head. I never had a family, and yet my orphan, sisterless heart trashes just the same. Both grieving and relieved. 

We now sit at the big table in the circular, shadowy room, cards splayed out around the glorious heap of my sister’s shining jewels, eyed hungrily by the thieves. Only a fraction of all the things I could give them, a bait for a promise I hope I can keep. I take a swig from the bottle beside me, finish it, and put it next to the other one, at the feet of the table.

“Isn’t all the wine going to go your head?”, says the Bomb, raising an eyebrow. The question has an almost motherly tone to it, which I know is mocking.

“Yes, but my inebriated head will only add to your shame once I’ve won,” I say, and deftly slide a car from the deck in my hands to the table. The Bomb’s eyes go wide as she considers it. She pouts.

The Roach starts to laugh, and even the Ghost tries to smother the grin dancing on his lips. “It feels so good having someone finally beat you!”

I smile, lean languidly against the chair.

Every feature of my captors, that is kept blank for the sake of the game, is highlighted by the flames of the candles. Suddenly, those features shift, changing their expressions. The Roach’s face becomes for a moment something out of a nightmare. But no: the true face of my nightmares is at the door, the force of it being slammed open having made the flames wobble for a moment. 

Jude is in yesterday’s clothes, and the shadows under her eyes, the bitten fingernails are telltale of her riotous worry, the fragility that is not only mine to suffer. I revel in the thought, even as I drown in the relief of her showing up, the promise of my death if she hadn’t fresh in my mind. 

“Jude,” the Bomb regards her. ”Sit down. We’ll deal you in.” I bet she is happy she has been involuntarily saved by her friend’s impromptu arrival.

Jude takes in the scene, and I can see the doubt and the anger settle in. Hoping to unsettle her even more, I grin. 

“What are you doing? He’s supposed to be tied up!” At that, she raises her hand to indicate me, indignant. “He’s our prisoner:”

The Roach intercedes for the group. “Worry not. Where’s going to go? You really think he can get past all three of us?”

The reminder of my situation makes the alcohol in my stomach churn, but I breathe and keep on the farce. That’s what I’m good at. I can’t fight my way out of here, but I can keep myself alive. 

“I don’t mind being one-handed, but if you’re going to restrain both of my hands, then you’ll have to pour the wine directly into my mouth.”

“He told us where the king kept the really good bottles, not to mention a stash of jewelry that belonged to Elowyn. He figured that in the confusion, no one would notice if it got lifted, and so far, no one has,” the Bomb says, and smiles. "Easiest job the Roach has ever done.” 

Jude seems get angrier at the revelation, fazed by the laughter and the trust to which she is only a spectator. “Everything is spiraling into chaos anyway. Might as well as have some fun. Don’t you think, Jude?”

I drawl out her name, let myself fall deeper into the wine’s soft embrace. _It’s all just a game,_ Nicasia had said at the river. _It’s all just a game._

“What did he offer you?”

A flash of the Ghost’s teeth. “Mostly gold, but also power. Position.”

“A lot of the things he hasn’t got,” says the girl, eyeing me.

I dramatically bring a hand to my heart. “I thought we were friends!”

Jude stalks toward me, puts a hand on the chair. She looks at me from above, with storm churning in the darkened honey of her eyes, and I have to make an effort to keep still, to not jump upright and far away from her. 

“And do what?” questions the Roach.

“He is _my_ prisoner,” The possession in the words, spoken by this mortal, irks me, but I keep smiling, especially as she crouches to free my legs of the ties. For a beat, I can almost pretend she is still just one of my subject, and that she is kneeling to me.

The wine, and the dread of predicting where this is going draw out my next words. “Can’t we stay out here? There’s wine out here.”

The words are light. They flirt, and ask for nothing but the moment in which they are pronounced. And yet, they show more of what they ought to. The Roach’s voice carries from behind me.

“Something bothering you, princeling? You and Jude don’t get along after all?”.

I stiffen, and I can’t keep the frown off my face. 

Jude harshly goes for my arms and pushes me to an adjoining room. I let myself be dragged, stumbling very unceremoniously as she ushers us in a space that looks like an office: carved desk in black wood, velvet stuffed chair with gleaming golden thread, an array of ink, bottles, papers and books messily placed on the mossy shelves growing from the walls. The smell of molten wax permeates the air.

Jude closes the door behind me, and I hear the chime of the lock. 

“Sit down,” she says, coming up and inviting me to a chair, close to the desk. I breathe in deeply, trying to get more air in. The room seems to close down on me, on Jude, here with me alone. _It’s all just a game._ I sit down.

Jude goes to the desk. A drawer is pulled out, forcefully slammed back in, making the table tremble. She has a crossbow in her hands. I’m confused for a single, blissful second, before I hear the sound of the arrow cocked back.

The movements are elegant, quick, but her face tells a different story. Wildly furious, and simultaneously, wildly euphorious.

It actually dawns on me that she might just decide to kill me, after all that I’ve done. She will put to the side the ambition and greed that keep her going, and she’ll give in the blinding revenge that she covets. This is my execution room. I pushed and pushed and pushed because I thought it would go without consequence, and here I am.

How much does it take for a wounded animal to strike back at her hunters?

 _“I get to decide what happens to him”._ I recall the way she hadn’t met my eyes, even as she had discussed my death with her comrades.

It occurs to me that she might be more ruthless than I ever was.

“You’re going to shoot me? Right now?”

I don’t know of what my voice is infused with. Surprise? Hatred? Ah, how I hated her, how I hated what she was and that even before now, all those times when I had the leverage, the strength, the taunting laughter, I never could manage to bend her. To make her smaller, so that she could occupy a smaller space of my mind. 

_Beg my forgiveness._

_I will keep hurting you until there is nothing left to hurt._

She didn’t give up then. She had stood there, a symbol of pure resilience, hair messed up by my grip in the graying sky, and I had never loathed her more. Never wanted her more. 

Now our roles are reversed.

I look at her now, barely kept at a leash, the rage brimming in her like it did back by the river. She is taut, pulled tight like the string of the crossbow, ready to snap. I choose the words carefully.

“I can see why you’d want to, but I’d really prefer if you didn’t.”

“Then you shouldn’t have smirked at me constantly!” she spits out. ”You think I am going to stand being mocked, here, now? You still so sure you’re better than me?”

It’s half a question, half an accusation on which her voice breaks. She was so unsettled, back in the main room, seeing me at the table with others. She is now, because after everything, I’m still here, smiling, ready to goad her into humiliation, to needle and insult her. I suddenly see the power she is latching onto, in that crossbow she is pointing at me. That’s the euphoria. A mad kind of joy gifted by the power she has over me.

_Beg my forgiveness._

She wants me to feel like I wanted her to feel at the tournament, at the palace, after every word I ever said to her. 

I know how to win this. I know what she wants. If I want to survive, I need to lower my guard a little. I need for her to see some vulnerability, so that she may get some of the power she yearns for. I think of all my family, their blood coating the throne, blood of my blood, blood that always turned me away. 

I raise my hands, splay my fingers. I make a small confession. “I’m nervous. I smile a lot when I’m nervous. I can’t help it.”

The arrow pointing at me shifts, and my will to get out of this alive pushes me further.

“You are _terrifying_. Nearly my whole family is dead, and while they never had much love for me, I don’t want to join them. I’ve spent all night worrying what you’re going to do, and I know exactly what I deserve. I have a reason to be nervous. I’ll tell you whatever you want. Anything.”

Vulnerability, I remind myself, even as I squirm from what I just said.

Jude is tempted. Hopeful. Of course she is. 

“No word games?”

Mirroring the gesture that I made to the Bomb, I bring my hand to my heart, bring strength to myself to pronounce the promise. “I swear it.”

“And if I shoot you anyway?”

“You might well, but I want your word that you won’t.”

I know that she isn’t faerie. She could just lie and strip me bare of my truths and then kill me. I would deserve that. I let go of that fear, try to let it drown in the wine I’ve thrown down. I try my best attempt at my usual, uncaring self, ready to revel. I raise my eyebrows.

“So you keep saying. It’s not comforting, I’ve got to tell you.”

It works. Jude chuckles. The crossbow shakes with her shoulder, and every sudden movement of the weapon makes me flinch.

She finally sets the infernal device on the desk. The arrowhead gleams.

Without the threat of death so close, I am suddenly too aware of her presence.

“You tell me whatever I want to know - all of it - and I won’t shoot you.”

I raise an eyebrow, disappointed by the bargain. “And what can I do to persuade not to turn me over to Balekin and Madoc?”

“How about you concentrate on staying alive?”

I shrug, ignoring the way my life has been dangled in front me for the past two days, like rotten leaves glamoured as delicacies, to be hunted by those starving, drugged, mortals at the revels. “What do you want to know?”

“I found a piece of paper with my name on it. Over and over, just my name.” 

I wince. I had predicted a number of question, from pure strategy and information to the story with Locke to more embarrassing ones, meant only to see me stutter, humiliated. But I hadn’t imagined she had seen _that_. Only one piece among many. Had she found others? I imagine her slithering with quiet feet in my room, pulling at and disentangling all the secrets tucked in the place there I live, and now doing the same with me. I imagine her hidden, her sharp eyes staring at me from behind a curtain as I almost pull my hair out, as I scratch my desk with the vehemence of my writing, desperate to get her out of my head.

“Well?” She is like a hound, like a stirrup pushed against a horse’s rib. I bide more time.

“That’s not a question. Ask me a proper question, and I’ll give you an answer."

“You’re terrible at his whole ‘telling me whatever I want to know’ thing.”

Her hand deliberately lunges for the crossbow, but I don’t take the bait. I know she is too curious now, too eager to take the opportunity.

Instead, I sigh, and I try to redirect the conversation. “Just ask me something. Ask about my tail. Don’t you want to see it?"

“You want me to ask you something?” she instead says. “Fine. When did Taryn start whatever is she has with Locke?”

I’m glad of the question. I glad of the change in subject, and I’m glad I have the chance to explain. I let out a laugh. “Oh, I wondered when you would ask about that,” I say, keeping my eyes fixed on her, happy to let her in on the joke played on her. “It was some months ago. He told us all about it: throwing stones at her window, leaving notes to meet him in the woods, wooing her by moonlight. He swore us to silence, made it all seem like a lark.” I retrace the steps, think about the Locke’s wish for ever-present challenge, for unpredictability, as wish just as strong as Valorian’s wish for violence. My friends, always ready to betray in order to get high on their preferred drug of choice.

I think of Nicasia, of the first time I saw her hands in Locke’s, of the loss opening in me where I though nothing lay. The same loss I later saw in her eyes as she stared to Taryn’s drenched figure in the cold waters of the river. “I think, in the beginning, he did it to make Nicasia jealous. But later…”

“How did it know it was her room?”

I smile. I can’t help but enjoy telling her of the trick. It helps me fell more secure in this room, with the arrow still longing for my heart on the desk. I’m not the only one walking on hot coals. “Maybe he didn’t. Maybe either of you would have done as his first mortal conquest. I believe his goal is to have both of you at the in the end.”

But she doesn’t let herself be hurt by my words. Instead: “What about you?”

I look at her, rattled. What does she know? 

I make a show of misunderstanding the question, only delaying the inevitable, and waiting for her to clarify. “Locke hasn’t gotten around to seducing me yet, if that’s what you are asking. I suppose I should be insulted.”

“That’s not what I mean. You and Nicasia were…” Her voice fades, a silent prompt to speak. I wish that she wouldn’t come dissecting the dynamics of my group, even as I remember that the same group was the cause of much of her suffering.

“Yes, Locke stole her from me. And I don’t know if Locke wanted her to make some lover jealous or to make me angry or just because of NIcasia’s magnificence. Nor do i know what fault in me made her choose him. Now to do you believe I am giving you the answers you were promised?”

“Did you love her?”

 _Let’s run away from here_ , Nicasia had said between the quiet laughters, as her gaze went from me to the blue Milkwood wetted by the last solstice’s full moon, as nets flowed and shone on her sleek hair, draped on her shoulders. Her cheek had been soft under my hand, and she had looked at me like no one had ever done before. Like I was her only anchor on the land that was both hers and never her home. Like nothing of the revel, the circles of dancers, the wild screams mattered. Only me.

I don’t want to give the girl in front of me that piece of myself. 

“What kind of question is that?” I accuse.

She shrugs. “I want to know.”

I look at the crossbow, and harness the fear of death into something that can make my mouth move. “Yes. I loved her.”

“Why do you want me dead?”

The question inexplicably hurts me, and I cover my face with my hands, skin warm against the gold of my heavy rings. I can’t stand to look at her. To look at her and her strength, a strength that isn’t only external, of the muscled arms that swing her steel sword. Strength wrung out like water from stiff cloth, molded from the world that keeps on rejecting her. She asks the question as if it is a weapon, not afraid of the implications of it, of the danger they represent, a danger in which she has lived all of her wretched, mortal life. She is so used to it, and I am part of the reason why.

She is so right, and yet she is wrong about this, about me. I don’t want her dead. Meek, stupid, drunken Cardan has always been too weak, too fragile, to bear death. Not even good at being bad. I think of Balekin’s lashes, of the burns on my thighs. I think of this lair, of my brother’s cruelty. Shame fills me to the brink, like I am nothing more than a wineskin. I don’t know what shames me more: that I’m so similar to my brothers, or that I could never be like them? 

“You mean with the nixies? You were the one who was thrashing around and throwing things at them. They’re extremely lazy creatures, but I thought you might actually annoy them into taking a bit out of you. I may be rotten, but my one virtue is that i’m not a killer. I wanted to frighten you, but I never wanted you dead. I never wanted anyone dead.” 

I stress the last words. Does she see me? I both want her to and despise the idea. I see memories flit in her eyes, her mind curling inward recalling past moments. I see the realization seep in her expression. Her lips part. 

I wanted to frighten her. I still want her to be afraid. I want her to have fear in that fearless heart, so that I may look at her and see part of myself. I feel as open as a cracked eggshell, never able to put the pieces back together. Too vulnerable, too exposed, too soft, while she has become my brother’s spy, my friend’s killer. She is far stronger than I ever could be, and now…now, she knows it too. _“I saw you tonight, almost getting your head chopped off by a weakling, a mortal girl. You, ungrateful boy, don’t deserve the Greenbriar’s name. Our father knew it from the moment you were born.”_ Balekin’s words, the dawn after the Tournament.

Her voice pierce my thoughts, make me lift my chin. “Valerian tried to murder me outright. Twice. First in the tower, then in my room at my house.”

Surprise locks me in place. I had thought different. I'd thought Valerian had died afraid, hunted and taunted by his former victim. It is actually surprisingly worse, to imagine him as the attacker, the slithering snake in the house. Madoc’s house. The idiot.

“I thought when you said you killed him you meant that you tracked him down and…Only a fool would break into the general’s house."

Jude, who had been stiff as a sugarcane by the bight, reaches for the collar of her shirt. For a moment I think she is going to take it off, and my heart speeds up. But she only pushes the cotton down, buttons straining as she shows me a dark line on her throat, like a rose’s thorny stem. “I have another on my shoulder from where he knocked me into the floor,” she says. “Believe me yet?”

I automatically lunge for her, as if I could magically fix that jagged line, as if to touch it and make it disappear. I feel like an accomplice. I enabled that attack, because I enabled that hate. Jude could have died because of me. Valerian is dead, because of me. Because I said and did things, and the seeds of them grew into something I did not care to pay attention to. 

“Valerian liked pain. Anyone’s. Mine, even. I knew he wanted to hurt you. And he had. I thought he’d be satisfied with that.” 

“Oh, go already. Stop boring us both.”, I had said, regarding the gleaming, red blade. I hadn't cared. I hadn't wanted to care. I shake my head.

I try to conjure grief for Valerian, but it is a small, withering things in my hands. A quicksilver smile by the hearth. Valerian’s hair whipped by the strong wind of the brugh as we rode. Years of knowing each other, and yet they are shadowed by all of his violence. The things he sometimes said. His foot on Jude's bare, swan-like neck. It is a grief smaller than the relief of the knowledge of never having to see him again. Shame hits me once more. I’ve never killed anyone, and yet I enjoy the ripe fruits of murder.

“So it doesn’t matter that Valerian wanted to hurt me? So long as he wasn’t going to kill me.”

“You have to admit, being alive is better,” I reply, and will lightness in my tone. 

Jude leans forward, assertively puts her splayed hands on the desk, creating a cage around the crossbow. I can feel the question before she speaks it. “Just tell me why you hate me. Once and for all.”

She is not unkind in her request. Inquisitive, but not harsh. She seems almost resigned. 

I, once again, bide time. I think of omission. I think of how you can cover a much bigger truth by rendering it undecipherable under the weight of other, much smaller ones. “You really want honesty?”

“I am the one with the crossbow, not shooting you because you promised me answers. What do you think?”, she retorts, and the harshness is back.

I frown at the threat. It’s unnecessary. I put my hand on the table, too, as if to brace myself for the words. To brace her. Jude Duarte, the unexpected great heir to the Grand General, with her sweet, gullible twin that cries at her own betrayal in the clearing, Jude who cares not of her own mortality, Jude with her swordsmanship, taught by her father, who took the pain to teach her every day. Jude Duarte, who never leaves my thoughts, who follows me into my nightmares. 

“Very well. I hate you because your father loves you even though you’re a human brat born to his unfaithful wife, while mine never cared for me, though I am a prince of Faerie. I hate you because you don’t have a brother who beats you. And I hate you because Locke used you and your sister to make Nicasia cry after he stole her from me. Besides which, after the tournament, Balekin never failed to throw you in my face as the mortal who could best me.”

Jude looks astonished at the confession, and I’m glad for it. She won’t pursue further.

“Is that all? Because it’s ridiculous. You can’t be jealous of me,” she says with uncertainty, like I am breaking some cosmic rule by daring say what I did. “You don’t have to live at the sufferance of the same person who murdered your parents. You don’t have to say angry because if you don’t, there’s a bottomless well of fear ready to open up under you.” Surprise welts into regret. She wishes she hadn’t spoken, which makes me in turn keener to believe in her words. Still, I tread carefully, because thinking of her afraid, as powerless as I feel, is something I wish for too much, to easily let myself believe it.

 _Sufferance of Madoc_. But I know that it’s not completely true, even if she struggles to admit it. I know that she carries his training, his way of life, his menace in herself. Everything she does is a painful reminder. Just as I also know that she cares about him. Just as I know that Madoc loves her. A murderer’s daughter. An orphan that is not an orphan. All wrong, all twisted, and yet…Far be it from me to judge love. I thought I understood it, when I was with Nicasia. Now it just feels like something as far away as it has been all my life, a feeling enclosed in golden glass that I can peer through, but never cross. A love I don’t judge, but that exists. It exists for her, small, lying mortal, just like it doesn’t for me.

Bitterness washes over me. “Oh really? I don’t know about being angry? I don’t know about being afraid?” I ask, a ferocious smile twisting my lips. I let the words mean less than what they really do, refer only to the last two days and this crossbow in my dead brother’s lair. "You’re not the one bargaining for your life.”

To my great dismay, she indeed decides to pursue further. “That’s really why you hate me? Only that? There’s no better reason?”, she needles. I scavenge for other, smaller truths, even when I know she won’t settle for them. I dig up the small quips, my brother’s taunts, the bitter taste of that lunch, drenched in salt. It’s not enough to build something she could believe. Never more than in this moment have I wished for the mortals' ability to lie. 

She prods me further, both with words and a menacing movement of the crossbow she once again picks up. I lean in the chair, when what I truly want is to sink into the wall and erase this conversation from my brain, even as relief and - anticipation? - flood me at the same pace as the expected disgust and shame do. As the confession hangs from my lips. I dread and hope what she might do with the information.

I close my eyes, begging for the stupor of the wine to take me in.

“Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It’s disgusting, and I can’t stop.”

Stunned silence greets me. I dare open my eyes, only to see a glimpse of Jude's beautiful face and wide eyes before my gaze is once again covered, this time by my hand. I take back everything. I don’t want her to know. I want to die. I want to die right here and right now. I say as much.

“Maybe you should shoot me, after all.”

“You’re playing me.”

I wish I was. I stay still, still as death, still as an deer in the forest, fearing the hunter’s spear.

Suddenly, I feel a cold, sharp, touch on the soft skin under my chin. My hand falls to the side. Without me noticing, Jude has stalked closer, and unsheathed what I guess must be a dagger from who knows where. She now looks at me, a breath’s distance from my face, distance that becomes smaller as the sting of the blade’s tip forces me to tilt my neck toward her. 

She’s too close. Too close for me to trust myself, to know that I won’t do something rash, that I won’t do what I’d done so many times in my dreams. Her scent, her presence make me dizzy. My slipping control sends me into a panic. I’d dreamed of her telling me to do whatever I wanted with her, but I had it backwards.

 _She_ could do whatever she wanted with _me_ , and I wouldn’t stop her.

The horror of the realization sets into my features, as I stare at her, unable to tear my eyes away as she inches closer.

“You really do want me. And you hate it.”

My breath itches, and I feel my cheeks prickle. 

A tendril of air, and suddenly the blade is tracing a freezing line across my neck. I barely notice it.

And then her lips graze mine.

Half of my head tries to make sense of the contact, of her mouth on mine, and the other tries to recoil from it, does everything to keep me still and rigid, to stop this. But her body is pressed against mine, her nose barely touching my cheek, and I crave her as I’ve never had before. I’m starved for this. I can’t keep my hands from rising to skim her arms, my eyes from closing.

I move slowly, hoping to only get a taste, and then turn away. Forget about her, about this disgusting obsession. Instead, I only want more, more, more. There is no choice but her, nothing else but her.

My movements lose their shyness. I grab her forearms, desperate to pull her closer. My lips start to move against hers, my hands rise to her neck, her hair. Her lips part, my tongue sweeps in, our teeth scrape. My head tilts to get more of her, even as the knife digs painfully in my neck. Her other hand sneaks from behind, warm and callous as she digs in my curls. Everything about this has a kind of violence Nicasia’s kisses never had. Nicasia was slow, coaxing, careful, and tasted like sea breeze. Jude doesn’t seem to know if she wants to hurt me.

But she wants me, I realize. It’s not just to test what she doubts might be the truth. She likes this. The knowledge makes me heady.

I don’t realize how much I’m lost in this, in her, until I feel the pressure ease on my neck, before hearing a hollow noise. Taken aback, I break the kiss to look at the desk. The blade of the dagger that was threatening to kill me gleams, its point embedded in the wood. Jude must have thrown it aside. The dagger. With which she wanted to kill me. Because she hates me, and that is why I’m stuck here, my rabbit heart beating in my ears, the dais of the throne above wet with my family’s blood, except for the brother who killed them all. And I didn’t care. I didn’t care that I spent all day terrified that Jude was never going to return to this lair, drinking to avoid the fear of death from pulling me under. I didn’t care that she is a mortal, a fickle thing. I didn’t care that she had me at knifepoint, that she was a spy who killed Valerian. I didn’t care that I am powerless, even now, as she towers above me, her breath ragged, her lips swollen. 

I didn’t care.

I laugh. I am hideous. I am everything my brother has ever spat about me.

I can feel, more than see Jude’s irritation at the sound, since I can’t peel away my eyes from that dagger. My mind reels, the memory of the kiss etched on my skin.

“Is that what you imagined?” Her voice is sharper than the edge of the discarded knife, but I know that she is at least unsettled as I am.

_Do whatever you want with me, Cardan. I want it all._

I try not to wince.

“No,” I reply, and decide that I’ve debased myself enough for today. I won’t, can’t, give this girl anything else. 

“Tell me.”

I shake my head, refusing the words. She won’t kill me - I think. I’m desperate enough to risk it. The relief of the admissions is now a nauseous kind of regret.

“Unless you’re really going to stab me, I think I won’t. And I might not tell you even if you were going to stab me.”

She staggers backwards. The corner of her mouth twitches. She goes to sit on the desk. Looks mildly confused. 

I recall what I mulled over for the past ten hours, drag it through the drunken state I am in. A way out. Out of this godforsaken place, out of Jude’s clutches. A way to stay alive.

“I am going to make a proposal. I don’t want to put the crown on Balekin’s head just to lose mine. Ask whatever you want for yourself, for the Court of Shadows, but ask something for me. Get him to give me lands far from here. Tell him I will be gloriously irresponsible, far from his side. He never needs to think of me again. He can sire some brat to be his heir and pass the High Grown to it. Or perhaps it will slit his throat, a new family tradition. I care not.”

I wonder if I’ll miss this place. Will I long for Nicasia, for the revels, for Hollow Hall…for Jude?

Instead of answering my proposal, she simply orders me to get up, and I obey. My whole body protests, and I struggle to make my muscles answer.

“So you’re not worried I’m going to run from it?”

“After our kiss, I am such a fool over you that I can hardly contain myself. All I want to do is nice things that make you happy. Sure, I’ll make whatever bargain you want, so long as you kiss me again. Go ahead and run. I definitely won’t shoot you in the back.”

For a couple of seconds I question her mental sanity. Then I realize that she is lying. A weird lie, exasperated and hyperbolic to the point of not being believable, that conveys a mocking contempt. It’s not the first time I’ve ever heard her - or Vivienne - speak like that, but never in such a obvious way. 

“Hearing you lie outright is a bit disconcerting."

“Then let me tell you the truth. You’re not going to run because you’ve got nowhere to go.”

No, I don’t. I don’t have a family, a home. I don’t know where my friends are. I am being searched throughout all of Elfhame. 

But what she says takes on a different meaning after what just occurred, what still sits restless in the pit that my heart is. 

_There is no choice but her, nothing else but her._

I will never escape her.


End file.
